Tag: change

The winds of change are blowing wild and free

UncategorisedPublished on3 Comments on The winds of change are blowing wild and free

The word has finally been made public that I am leaving my job at the end of June.

After five years working as a consultant I have decided to start my own business here in Australia. I want to build on the work and ideas I have been developing over the last ten years or so. I am both excited and anxious, but mainly I feel calm, ready and determined.

I am sure that my writing will shift to charting that journey, as I start up and as Dialogic Learning takes some strides into the world.

Dialogic is a way to describe some of my best work. Developing capacity in others and leading organisational change requires dialogue, it requires strong, trusting relationships. I know I can form these quickly and that this establishes a great platform to do creative, challenging work. My new business will focus on that.

My understanding and expertise with the creative process has grown and I still believe that teaching, and learning design, requires our deepest creative skills. Dialogic Learning will focus on helping people improve their creative process.

There is still a lot more to develop, share and write about as I build things up over the next three months or so (and also look back on the last few years). I have created a little holding page for now, just to countdown until go time and where you can sign up for updates and get in touch.

I have had some great support from all sorts of different people as word has spread. My online networks have played an integral role in my thinking and development over the years and I want to keep it that way.

Thankyou, more soon.

Second hand courage is still courage

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Have you ever felt like you might not be able to face it? Sometimes you just don’t have all the energy that you need to get through. It is OK not to have all the answers. There are times when we fall short of the line or just lack that spark we need. That’s OK. It was during 2010 and early 2011 that I realised I was suffering just such a deficit.

My career seemed to be happening to me and I felt helpless to some of the issues I was facing. I tumbled from one urgent/important item to another. I was out of balance. During my time in schools I had never had to deal with compromise. And here it was. With such an energy deficit I had to ration where I put my efforts. I wanted to be the best classroom teacher I could be and at the same time develop as a school leader. But compromise stretched its tendrils around both endeavours. This toxic time eroded my mental health and I suffered.

There were days when I had to stop the car on the way to work and take a few deep breaths.

It wasn’t my own courage that pushed me on. It was the second hand courage of people close to me. Their unwavering support helped steady my nerves, their energy topped me up. Also through some teary discussions I managed to get some distance and realised that it wasn’t me. It was OK. The situation I was in could change and I could change it.

If you are in that struggle consider these things I learned. Surround yourself with people who can share their energy and courage with you — their courage is still something that can carry you. Find perspective by discussing things with someone who will understand your experience. Plot your way out, find a course that puts you back making decisions about what is next.

Nobody told me what to do

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For maybe three years now I have been listening to a particular Daft Punk track and mulling over the lyrics. Whilst I am writing now I have the track on, take a few moments to listen to it.

https://open.spotify.com/track/0oks4FnzhNp5QPTZtoet7c

Giorgio by Moroder is a documentary song about the early life and musical influence of the Italian musician Giovanni Giorgio Moroder. It specifically refers to his pioneering work in electronic music composition and use of the synthesiser. He refers to his choices in creating a “sound of the future”, about adding a synthesised click on a track, a choice which eventually heralded a new era in music.

It is his latter comments (4:58) that are captured on the track that have, in turn, captured my attention for so long.

Once you free your mind about a concept of harmony and of music being correct, you can do whatever you want. So, nobody told me what to do, and there was no preconception of what to do.

It is this fascinating reference to a deliberate freeing of his mindset which resonates with me so much. The awareness of the “correct” musical theory and deliberately unshackling himself from it in order to be creatively free.

The final words uttered on the track are also telling and seemingly refer to a lack of precedent, an untrodden path yet to be explored. Moroder explains there were no leaders in those moments, no plans to follow, no guidebook — just rules to break.

1*F1F1JkJJ1Ijy3fYlEyK NA
New ideas may come from others but trying new stuff can still be isolating

It reminds me of something Phil ‘dm’ Campbell recently shared about his desire to not be a repeater or relay station, but to find something in himself that is powerful and true and unique.

Being a repeater or relay station is holding you back from tapping into your true self and creative core. I firmly believe that.

Perhaps Moroder was able to strip away the reference bias others were relying on and steer clear of relaying and repeating musical styles. He made creative choices with no precedent, choices that took music to a different place. Not just repeating, relaying or even remixing.

Phil goes on to challenge us all.

So ask yourself, what moment today could you have changed to instead of relaying and repeating could you have done something that was really worth relaying or repeating, something that came from your core of concern.

Let’s temper some of this with a different perspective, a comment from John Hegarty and his book Hegarty On Creativity, There Are No Rules:

the truth is that everything we create is based on something that’s gone before. It has to be. Nothing happens in a vacuum, least of all creativity and ideas.

Maybe for Giorgio in his creative exploration he had discovered a vacuum. An ill defined musical space that was ready for better definition. He was the first there, when everyone else was repeating, remixing and relaying something else. It would make sense that in the 70s there were fewer musical ideas and so more vacuumous space to discover.

It takes creative courage to be in such a place on your own, to test ideas with little or no waymarkers or sense of correctness. It is both freeing and burdensome, as you know, soon others will follow.

I wonder about how that creative isolation is true of other breakthrough ideas or pioneering souls.

Just a footnote about the Daft Punk track I discovered from the associatedWikipedia article:

When Moroder arrived in the studio to record his monologue, he was initially perplexed that the booth contained multiple microphones; he briefly wondered if the extra equipment was a precaution in case one of the microphones broke. The recording engineer explained that the microphones varied with origin dates that ranged from the 1960s to the 21st century, and that each microphone would be used to represent the different decades in Moroder’s life. The engineer added that although most listeners would not be able to distinguish between each microphone, Thomas Bangalter of the duo would know the difference.

Now that is attention to detail.

School Is Not a Metaphor for Life

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School should not simply be a metaphor for life. Our students in our schools today deserve a learning experience that values the contribution they can make to the world around them now.

I have always subscribed to this model or definition of the role of school in our society. It may not be a new one, but it is not something you would call commonplace. More frequently experiences in school are metaphors for the “real” experience a student might have. We present to our peers as opposed to the audience who needs to hear our ideas. We encourage creative ideas but never network those ideas out of the room. This needs to change.

School should not simply be a metaphor for life.

I am grateful to David Hawley who recently put some words around a similar sentiment.

If we were to do something that really mattered to ourselves, our classrooms, our schools, and our community, the potential for impact would be at once local and global. Start finding ways to engage students in understanding real-world problems, and then support them in solving those problems. Every student should experience the joy that comes with being a unique and positive force in the world.

Again the idea of a new education standard comes to mind, a truthful realistic opportunity, not just brochure-ware or tokenistic gestures of student-centredness. After all,

Humanity cannot wait for students to graduate.

It is always encouraging isn’t it when you discover your own thinking articulated in someone else’s words. David Hawley references a crucial new definition of what a learning portfolio could be, something in line with parameters referencing: experience, change, influence, creative contribution and social impact.

We need to give students in every school, at every age, real agency and authentic opportunities to make a difference in this volatile, unpredictable, complex, and ambiguous world. With this in mind, we cannot be satisfied only with students learning about the world and developing deep conceptual understanding of multiple disciplines. We need young people building an ever-expanding portfolio of skills and experiences of things that they have done, created, and contributed to – things that matter to them, to others, and to the world we share.

These concepts excite me the most about the future of learning and the re-definition of “school”. I am not sure we can wait much longer. Even Dewey knew this to be true:

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.

Another First Day

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The walk to the car was a quiet one. It wasn’t far, maybe a few hundred metres, but every one of them was a quiet one. It was the last thing I was expecting when picking my son up from his first day at another school. We had been in this situation a number of times in the last few years. It seemed George had grown accustomed to the change, a little anyway. He certainly seemed much more assured in the time leading up to his first day.

I spent the day wondering how he was getting on. It must be so tough to be supplanted into a completely different school, different faces and routines. It takes courage and resilience to keep going in the face of such wholesale changes like that. We probably don’t do it enough in our adult lives. If we had a choice we often prefer the path of the known and the familiar. I suppose the only time we are confronted with that ourselves is when we move jobs. I always enjoyed the challenge of taking on a new role, meeting new people and trying to quickly understand new responsibilities and where stuff was.

In many ways George, as a nine year old, is not quite burdened with the same social awkwardness we gather as we get older. Making friends as a nine year old is one of your major projects. And yet I still spent the day fretting about the sort of day he would have and whether he would be OK. I imagined picking him up and dealing with either a) the fallout, or b) the excited tumble of stories. That was perhaps why the quiet walk to the car surprised me.

I took his bag from his shoulder as a few of his new pals said their farewells. I scanned his face for any clues to the day, anything to help fill in the blank chapter I had. He seemed pretty calm. There was something about the quiet in him that made me feel really settled. I asked, just once, how his day had been and he replied with a short, “Fine.”

We walked through the school gates and along the road to where I had parked the car. I knew he had a big day for a nine year old, he had overcome a big challenge. He walked beside me with a calmness that I could sense. I could also tell his mind was ticking away thinking through his first day at his new school. He wasn’t rambling off a slew of stories nor was he clearly upset, he just seemed settled and comfortable walking beside me, grateful to be with me, but quietly lost in his own thoughts. I mirrored his calm and refrained from peppering him with questions every few strides, we just walked together. Although it was unusual for him not to be chattering away, it seemed, in a way, he was telling me all I needed to hear.

We got to the car and George hopped into the back. I closed my door and dumped his bag in the passenger side, we soon pulled out onto the road leaving his first day in the rear view mirror. It was probably a few minutes later that George chirped up, “That day went really fast.”

But I already knew that everything had been OK.